AT&T's New TV Offering

AT&T is being sued by the United States Department of Justice to stop the AT&T merger with Time Warner. It looks like the CEO of AT&T Randall Stephenson just dropped a bomb to try to diffuse the DoJ's case. You probably know that AT&T provides Internet, video (with DirecTV), phones, and mobile.

The big news is that AT&T's DirecTV will start offering a $15.00 a month streaming video service. The new service, called AT&T Watch, doesn’t include any sports programming. A lot of video customers complain that they are required to pay for watching sports shows when they never watch them. Often there are mandatory sports surcharges even if customers don’t like to watch any sports channels.

One drawback in having your hands in a lot of baskets is that you wind up with a lot of competitors across a wide playing field. With video, AT&T competes against fellow teleco Verizon as well as Internet and Cable companies Charter and Comcast. Its satellite brand goes up against Dish TV. In the wireless arena they have their old rival Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint who have just started merger noises again.

AT&T Watch will be free to AT&T wireless customers. At least according to Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche, but will be available for purchase by prospective customers no matter who their current cable TV or Internet provider is now. At this time we are not sure about AT&T U-verse Internet and TV customers.

AT&T and Communications Workers of America in Negotiations Again

Cable, Internet and telephone companies like AT&T just seem to go round and round with labor unions. In the newest round, AT&T workers' contracts in the midwest have expired and the contracts are under renegotiation.

Although the AT&T employees voted to go on strike if a new agreement was not reached by the time the current one expired, the AT&T Internet and telephone fiber installers and other workers remain on the job. The current contracts covering two groups of AT&T employees expired recently. The union that covers the worker is the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The groups of workers make up about 14,000 AT&T workers in each area.

The CWA union wants to ensure that the workers get affordable health care and sufficient retirement benefits under the new contract. Union officials have said the workers would go on strike if they needed to.

You may remember that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson made a promise last year that AT&T would hire an additional 7000 new employees if last years tax cut that was passed.

AT&T provides phone, Internet and video to much of America. The company can trace its lineage all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell and the Bell Telephone System more than a hundred years ago.

Cox Cable and Dish Testify for FCC

Internet and tv provider, Cox Cable Vice President Suzanne Fenwick testified against the Time Warner purchase by phone, Internet and video provider, AT&T. She said that she was concerned that Cox could lose a large number of subscribers if Cox and Time Warner could not reach an agreement as to carriage rates for Turner programming if AT&T bought Time Warner.

Sling TV Group President Warren Schlichting expressed his own considerations if Sling had to pay higher prices for Time Warner content and had to either raise prices or lose channels, they would probably lose subscribers who would likely go to Dish’s main competitor, AT&T owned DirecTV.

Sling is owned by the Dish Network, the second largest satellite TV company in the United States. The biggest satellite TV company is DirecTV, already owned by AT&T. Schlichting testified that the merger would give Turner greater bargaining power as other, smaller cable and satellite companies. 

Greg Rigdon of Comcast Cable was also called as a witness and for his part said he had “no reason to believe [the deal] would impact my negotiations with Time Warner or HBO.” One has to wonder if Comcast's more or less support of AT&T has anything to do with the fact that Comcast owns a considerable amount of content themselves. There has already been talk that some of Comcast's concessions to get approval to buy NBC would be extended.

Finding Internet and Cable Bundles

It is not always the easiest thing to find the Internet and cable bundle you want. That is where the Bundle Plans website comes in. They have searched through all the bundle plans so you don't have to. The staff at Bundle Plans are always looking for all the Internet and cable bundle providers to update their website.

Whether you are looking for a bundle with Internet and Cable or looking for a bundle with Internet service phones and video you will be able to find it on BundlePlans.com.

To find the double or triple bundle that is right for you justy click on the triple play bundle package or double play bundle tab and look at what is available.

And the bundles available on the site aren't only from AT&T, sure they have Internet, phone and video bundles from big telephone companies like AT&T but they also have Internet, cable and voice bundles from smaller cable companies like RCN. It you want a triple play bundle from Comcast they have you covered as well as a double play from Cox Cable.

Connect America Fund: Bring Internet to Rural America

Last year the Federal Government gave millions of dollars to telecommunications companies to improve the high speed Internet connection to rural zip codes. The money was first set aside after the mortgage collapse of 2008. It was part of the stimulation package. The idea is to give the telecos money so that they can build out Internet connections to areas under served with Internet. Then they can charge their new customers lots of money and pay their executives even more money.

Most of the major players in telecom are getting a pretty big slice of the pie. Some of the top recipients of Connect America Funding are:

Telephone, Internet and video provider AT&T, who gets about $427 million annually so that AT&T can provide broadband to 2.2 million locations in 18 states. Oh, and it will probably help them buy Time Warner.

CenturyLink accepted $500 million from Connect America, helping CenturyLink provide high-speed Internet to locations in 33 states. That makes over a million households and businesses all told, and over half of them have speeds of 20 Mbps or more.

Frontier provides phone, Internet and other services, mostly in Texas, California and Florida. They are getting almost $300 million a year from Connect America. They reported that they now provide 331,000 small businesses broadband as a result of the program. They have also improved speeds to 875,000 homes and businesses.

AT&T fights "One Touch Make Ready" Rules

Internet, voice and video provider, AT&T has asked the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider a new "One Touch Make Ready" (OTMR) rule that would limit the process to routine transfers on existing utility poles. OTMR rules aim to simplify installation of new Internet cables.

In a recent wfiling with the FCC, AT&T said that limiting who could move lines would reduce the chance of existing services getting interrupted during the OTMR process.

“Limiting OTMR to routine transfer would minimize service disruptions, which are inherent in complex make-ready work such as transfers of wireless equipment and cable splicing,” AT&T said in its filing.

Fresh off their FirstNet win, AT&T stressed that if there is any  service disruptions it might affect national and local public safety organizations like the fire and police departments as well as consumers.

Since AT&T has provided phones, video and Internet bundles for years, they say that companies that have more experience would be better at handling the changes and/or finding ways to avoid connectivity problems in a area.

“While pre-approved contractors can perform make-ready work, existing attachers are in the best position to reduce customer outages because they can best determine how complex make-ready work will adversely impact their service and how to minimize or eliminate that risk,” AT&T said.


As an Internet, voice and video provider, AT&T also points out that Google Fiber, which has been a leading advocate of One Touch Make Ready, agrees that any "make ready" actions need to be done with caution.

“Even Google Fiber, one of the staunchest OTMR advocates, recognizes that ‘existing attachers should have the first opportunity to perform their own make ready, since service outages could affect the businesses,’” AT&T said.

AT&T has been fighting One Touch Make Ready rules for years, probably because they see it as a way to slow down competitors like Google Fiber. For example, the sued Google and the city of Louisville over network access a few years ago. AT&T is one of the largest providers of Internet, phones and video and they want to keep it hat way.

AT&T Gets 100% of States to Sign Up For FirstNet First Responder Network

Last year, phone, video and Internet provider, AT&T won the right to offer communications service to first responders with a program called FirstNet.

It seemed like it was touch and go for a bit, but eventually all fifty states, Washinton DC, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands all signed up for AT&T’s FirstNet first responders network. The states were required to decide if they wanted to be a part of the program by the end of the year or they had to seek another first responder network to work with. All of them chose AT&T. Several US Territories still have to decide.

For their part, AT&T has promised that they will be coughing up more than $40 billion toward the build out of the network. As part of the deal they get a large amount of radio spectrum for use in the first responder program. AT&T will be required to prioritize first responders but the alloted spectrum will also carry consumer mobile traffic.

At over 100 ywears old AT&T has been providing bundle services like AT&T Internet, phone, and U-Verse Video quite a while. Now they are helping first responders communicate in the event of an emergency. AT&T also provides DirecTV and security systems.